I believe that Asperger is highly misleading. An Asperger person looks
"odd" to others. When they
interact with him, they probably notice some of the symptoms that are
characteristic of the disorder.
But the devastating part of the disability usually goes unrecognized:
That the Asperger
child/adolescent/adult does not understand.

He does not understand because of two deficiencies: Fragmentation and
Mindblindness.

For a througout discussion of Fragmentation, read Uta Frith's book
"Autism: Explaining the Enigma".
For Mindblindness, read Simon-Baron Cohen's book
"Mindblindness".
I can only give here two short
paragraphs that should nevertheless give you a pretty good idea of what
the terms mean.

About Fragmentation:

"Asperger persons may learn many facts about the world, but their
knowledge seems to remain
curiously fragmented. They somehow fail to put their experience and
knowledge together to derive
useful meaning from these often unconnected bits of information." (From
Uta Frith: "
Autism and Asperger Syndrome").

About Mindblindness:

Normal people mind read all the time, effortlessly, automatically, and
mostly unconciously. It is the
natural way they interpret, predict, and participate in social behavior
and communication. They ascribe
mental states to people: states such as thoughts, desires, knowledge,
beliefs and intentions.
Asperger people do not have these unconcious abilities. They do not mind
read other people, and
they may go through life without realizing that other people have mind
states unless someone
explains it to them or they read it in the books. (Adapted from
Simon-Baron Cohen "Mindblindness").

NOT UNDERSTANDING

If I am in a car and I turn the key of the ignition and nothing happens,
instantly, associations will form
in my mind and with little effort I get the picture of what is happening.
I understand:

I turn the key, and nothing happens---and the lights on the panel go
dead---the battery must be
dead---This is a new battery---It is unlikely to go bad so
soon---Probably it's dead because the
alternator is not working---Or it could be the relay---Or it could be a
fuse---If it is a fuse then this
would be a piece of cake to fix... etc.

With physical things, my mind works as well as a normal mind. But when it
comes to dealing with
people, associations do not form and I only get a very simple picture of
what is happening. I do not
understand.

THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

For some reason that is out of the scope of this article (weak drive for
global coherence), my mind
fails when I deal with people. Let me give an example:

Dad is with his son John. There are millions of facts stored in John's
memory, including:

Fact A) Dad likes to say nice things to me

Fact B) I am learning to drive

Now, Dad faces John and tells him:

Fact C) Son: You are an excellent driver.

If John is normal, his mind is not fragmented. When his brain is
processing his dad's comment,
associations form between Facts A), B), and C):

Son: you are an excellent driver---Dad likes to say nice things to me---I
am just learning to drive.

And he processes all this information...

I am just learning how to drive, so I don't drive well yet, and my
father is telling me I am an excellent
driver, so what my dad is actually doing is giving me a compliment,
probably to encourage me to
learn.

...and he stores Fact D) in his memory:

Fact D) Dad just said another nice thing to me.

And then he would probably smile and tell his dad: "Dad, you are so
nice..." etc.

Now, if John has Asperger, he has a fragmented mind and associations do
not form in his mind.
When he receives Fact C) "Son, you are an excellent driver", facts A) and
B) do not pop up into his
conciousness, and his brain doesn't have anything to work with, and
stores fact C) literally:

Fact C) I am an excellent driver.

And he doesn't realize that his dad just tried to make a nice comment to
him, and he doesn't respond
in an appropiate way. His father then reinforces his belief that his son
lives "inside a glass" and is
unreachable.

Actually, there is one problem with this example. (Maybe you noticed it
already?): If John has
Asperger, Fact A) ("Dad likes to say nice things to me") wouldn't have
been in his mind in the first
place because that fact obviously comes from information processed by a
normal mind, capable of
mind reading the other person's intentions. If John has Asperger, his
mind contains only information
stored literally.

CONFUSION

The Asperger's mind is not totally disabled. Normally it will make some
limited associations, but
usually the result, instead of being useful to him, leads him instead to
a state of confusion. For
instance, in the above example, Fact B) could have popped up and John's
mind could have
processed it:

Son, you are an excellent driver---I am only learning how to drive---so I
am not an excellent driver (?).

Since John cannot mind read his father's intentions, he just doesn't know
what to do with this
conflicting information and he is confused. (Again, he doesn't even look
at his father, and he probably
won't answer, and his father reinforces his belief that he cannot
communicate with his son, which
sadly, happens to be the case).

This happened and still happens to me all the time. When somebody tells
me something with a
second meaning, I usually become confused instead of trying to figure out
his intentions.

I somehow "forget" to figure out his intentions. In other words, Fact E)
doesn't pop into my
conciousness:

Fact E) Whenever somebody tells me something, and as a result I feel
confused, I should try to figure
out his intentions.

This confusion happens so often, that parents should be ready for it.
When the son does not answer,
it is likely to be because he is confused because he cannot visualize his
parents' intentions. They
should then explain their intentions to him literally ("I am telling you
that you are an excellent driver
because I want to encourage you to continue learning"). If he still
doesn't answer, it is probably
because he is still confused. They should go on until he gets the
message.

THE ICEBERG BODY

Since his birth, John has been storing nothing but literal information.
Not only his mind doesn't work.
He doesn't amass experience ("My father likes to say nice things to me")
as a normal person does. It
is a huge and constantly growing empty snowball made emptier yet by the
fact that he grows up
without having any significant social contact.

What can you expect of him if he grows up in this condition? It is hard
to visualize let alone explain it.
(For an eye opener, read Donna Williams' "Nobody Nowhere"). You live in
a world where nothing
makes sense and you do not understand anything about anything. You make
blunder after blunder
after blunder. People victimize you and you neither realize it nor stop
it. You drive friends away. You
offend people. You end up alienating your parents with your mindlessly
stupid behavior. And all
without even realizing that you are doing something wrong.

The more I think of if, the more I become convinced that the cases that
we hear and read about, are
only the ones where the person has been relatively successful in staying
out of very serious trouble.
Untreated Asperger is, in my opinion and experience, much more
devastating than untreated
schizophrenia, and one of the causes is that it is so damned misleading.
The person looks so normal
that parents never realize the kind of protection he really needs. I have
done so many stupid things,
like getting into a car and trying to find out how fast it can go! I
could have killed myself (I came close
several times) or killed somebody else. I could be in jail now for it. Or
for any of the many stupid
things I have done. Some Asperger people end up in jail. And they go to
jail without even realizing that
they did something wrong:

"Asperger people have been involved in some difficult [legal] cases.
Typically, the Asperger individual,
when apprehended, does not seem to feel guilty, does not try to conceal
nor excuse what he or she
did, and may even describe details with shocking opennes. Sometimes,
however, law officers
misunderstand and thus mistreat the unfortunate and unwitting culprit.
This is specially likely in the
case of the relatively well-adapted Asperger individual whose behaviour
is superficially normal, and
whose appearance and demeanour do not elicit the help he or she needs"
(Uta Frith: Autism and
Asperger Syndrome).

I grew up untreated, because 40 years ago, there were no books, and
nobody knew what the
underlying cause of autism was, neither what to do about it. Today, it
should be different. Now we
know that the Asperger child desperately needs somebody to explain him
his disability, and
what can he do to compensate for it. Somebody to explain everything that
he doesn't understand.
What he shouldn't do and why he shouldn't do it. And also as important,
somebody who will set aside
the superficial symptoms and go to the core of his problem. Somebody who
will not let himself be
caught by his highly misleading appearance. He not only needs to be
taught to understand. He also
needs to be understood.

I used to believe that today's kids with Asperger would have it much
easier than we did, but that
doesn't always seem to be the case. For months, I have been reading
postings and web sites in the
Internet, and I have yet to come across the most important words for
Asperger: Understanding and
being understood. In fact, in
O.A.S.I.S.,
the best Asperger site I have found in the web, I came across
an
article of a mother who is wondering if she should tell her son about
his Asperger, and she
decides against it because she sees in his face that he already knows!
(Shudder!)

Autistic children seem to be faring better. They are being tought to
understand with the Loovas
method. Probably not everybody realizes that that is what behavior
modification does: To teach the
child to understand:

Look at me! (Understand that I exist!)

Horse, cup. (Understand that the babble you hear has a meaning!)

No! (Understand that you should'n do that!)

GETTING OUT OF THE CLOUD

Now that I know about Asperger, I have been slowly putting together some
of my experiences and
knowledge to derive useful meaning from previously unconnected bits of
information. I will give an
example:

When I was six or seven, I remember my father game me a speedometer for
me to play. The needle
was stuck. I tinkered with it with a magnet I had, and the magnet pulled
on the needle and released it.
Then I found that I could move the needle to any number I wanted by
sliding the magnet at the
bottom. He then told me that he wanted it back because I had fixed it and
he wanted to sell it. I told
him it was mine. He asked me what I wanted in exchange for it. I told him
I wanted six batteries. The
big ones. He went out and came back with the batteries in a small bag. I
gave him the speedometer
and he gave me the batteries. I was fascinated by the color of the
batteries. They were "Ray-O-Vac",
shiny blue on yellow, my favorite color.

Unconnected bits of information. Things stored literally. But now I am
able to put it all together to get
useful meaning from it:

When I was about six or seven, my dad gave me a speedometer for me to
play. The needle was
stuck, and instead of throwing it away, he brought it home for me to
play. I tinkered with it with a
magnet I had, and the magnet pulled on the needle and released it. Then I
found that I could move the
needle to any number I wanted by sliding the magnet at the bottom.

When he saw it, he couldn't stop chuckling. He told everyone on sight
that I had fixed it with a
magnet. After a while, it dawned on him that he could take it back and
have it sold. He negotiated with
me and we settled on six Ray-O-Vac batteries. He then went out to buy
them himself (The man was a
millionaire; he could have sent one of his employees, but he went
himself!). I remember when he
came back with the batteries in a little brown bag and we traded.

Now I realize how much he must have enjoyed that episode. My old man. He
passed away last year. I
could never communicate with him. When I read the books and started
getting out of the cloud of
Asperger, he already had advanced Alzheimer's.